


Going Out with a Bang

by jaydick_love



Category: DCU
Genre: under the red hood - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-06
Updated: 2015-07-06
Packaged: 2018-04-07 22:35:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4280487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaydick_love/pseuds/jaydick_love
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The second death of Jason Todd, who went out with a bang once again.<br/>Fic is inspired by the amazing movie "Under the Red Hood."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Going Out with a Bang

It was just like before. There were only little bits that were different. This time, it wasn’t Joker’s bomb that blew. It was Jason’s. It wasn’t the ex-Robin who was closest to the bomb, it was Joker. They weren’t in some faraway place in an abandoned warehouse, but a dead complex in the slums of Gotham. Being in the city changed the boom. It wasn’t nearly as deafening, it had to be smaller, because Jason didn’t want to hurt any civilians. It still packed a punch of course.

The major thing that was different about it this time, was that Jason didn’t die by himself. He wasn’t alone. Bruce was here, and he was grabbing Jason by the collar, practically yanking him towards the window just as the bomb struck zero.

Like before, everything became white hot with flying shrapnel, heavy bricks of building falling, the air stuffy and smoky. Somewhere between being dragged and the bomb going off, Batman lost his grip as the force sent them flying. That part was all dark and blurred; Jason didn’t really see or feel what was happening. All he knew was that he flailing and then he wasn’t.

He must have blacked out for a few moments, because when he gasped awake, his whole body was burning with agony, rubble buried on top of him. Faintly, he could hear the sick, broken cackle of the Joker’s laughter, and just over that, he could hear the sound of shrapnel and crumbled pieces of building being desperately moved.

Jason tried to move the rubble off, but it was so heavy and his limbs hurt so badly. Where had his tolerance for pain disappeared to? Wasn’t it supposed to be working? He guessed that whatever injuries he sustained was too much for his body this time to just get up and stumble to his safe house.

Besides, when he pressed that trigger, he had expected to die. Wanted to die.

Maybe it wasn’t too late for that. 

So Jason let his eyes slip shut, let whatever was bound to happen, to occur.

—

Oh God. Not again. No, no, no! Jason! Where are you?

Bruce was shifting through the remains of the complex desperately. He knew that he should stop and assess and try to pinpoint Jason’s approximate location instead of blindly lifting up rubble. But he couldn’t stop. All he could do was search, even though his limbs ached and it was kind of hard to hear. He needed the upturned rubble to show that young man, to show that he was still breathing, still alive. Bruce wouldn’t be able to bear it if he saw that Jason’s body was once more broken, burnt, and mangled.

The last time he was in this situation, he had found Jason curled up in a ball in the middle of the destroyed warehouse, as if he was trying to shield himself from the blow. When Bruce had found him, touched his skin, he was already cold. Then he turned over Jason onto his back. With all his training, all the gore he’s seen, it did not prepare him to see how the bomb tore Jason apart. He ended up whirling around and throwing up on the rubble.

A third of Jason’s body had been disintegrated, mostly the upper right side. Bruce tried picking up the boy, but he couldn’t because parts of Jason were completely gone, no longer holding together his organs. His organs had begun to poke out his body when Bruce tried to pick him up. He couldn’t help but throw up again, and once he mustered the courage to move again, he took off his cape and wrapped the dead Robin in it to keep his body intact.

Bruce couldn’t go through that again.

The explosion had left his ears ringing and slowly recovering. Sadly, it wasn’t hard to hear Joker’s laughter. When he saw the clown, there was a brief moment of imagining the bomb actually killing him. He wanted that to happen. Joker was too stubborn, too mad to just die though. He considered placing enough rocks on his chest to suffocate him, but didn’t. He needed to find Jason.

After shoving shrapnel and rubble for what seemed like forever, Batman finally found Jason towards the northern left corner of the room, buried under heavy pieces of shrapnel. His mask was in tatters, didn’t even deserve to be called a mask anymore. Blood was tricking out the corner of his lip, a deep gash trickling more blood down his temple. One hand was broken from the gun that backfired, which sent a pang of guilt through Bruce. A piece of shrapnel was lodged into his thigh, another in his right side. There was no doubt that his ribs were broken and possibly other bones. The most frightening injury he had sustained was a large piece of rusted copper pipe that had speared its way into Jason’s lower left collarbone. It was large enough that it had probably hit part of his heart, or at least injured it.

Bruce’s mind began to whirl. That was deadly. Very deadly. His collarbone was probably shattered, little bits of bone floating around his system like shrapnel. There were no doubts that his pulmonary veins and arteries that connected to his heart were profusely bleeding. Or either part of the broken collarbone was blocking the veins path to his heart. The pipe was blocking off blood flow to the heart, forcing the blood out. Either way, there was already a puddle of red underneath Jason. He was going to bleed out, and if that didn’t kill him, whatever shattered pieces of bone floating around his system would tear up his delicate organs. Jason would require the best doctors and many long surgeries.

“Jason! Jason!” Bruce knelt beside the broken body, jostling him as gently as he could. For the first time in a long time, he was at a lost for what to do. Did he take out the pipe and move Jason to a hospital? Would doing that make him bleed out faster? Everything he could do seemed to only make the situation worse.

At the sound of his name, the young man blearily opened his eyes, the teal of them slowly fogging and clouding over like glass. That was what happened when someone was about to die; the glazed eyes that looked like they weren’t seeing much of anything.

“Stay with me Jason.” Bruce growled, taking off his cape and wrapping it around the wound, causing Jason to groan with renewed pain.

Jason’s voice was weak, barely a whisper. “Don’t… I’m gone any-any-anyways…” Red leaked out the corner of his lips faster, staining the dirty rubble, dripping down his defined chin.

“No! You are not leaving me. Not again.” Batman’s voice was choked with emotion, desperately trying to keep it together.

Jason was barely breathing, eyes unseeing, voice a heartbreaking wheeze. Bruce had to lean down to hear his breathy voice. “Too late, you stupid ass…’m just glad…glad that…that. ’m not… alone this time.” The few seconds it took for the antihero’s eyes to glaze over into unseeing, blank, glassy orbs felt like forever. Then the blood stopped flowing, because there were no more pulses to push the blood. No heart beat to make the rest of the body alive.

It terrified Bruce to the point he was hyperventilating and he was screaming his son’s name. But there wasn’t even the rise and fall of his chest. Nothing. Jason was as limp as a rag and cooling quickly to match the chilly weather of Gotham. A broken sob erupted from Bruce’s chest, wild and grief filled. He kept expecting Jason to gasp some snarky comment, or angrily yell something and curse to no end. Or at least shoot Bruce. He would have gladly taken a bullet to know that Jason was alive.

But Bruce had failed him again. And because of his failure, his son was gone again. It was even worse knowing that Jason had caused his own death because Bruce picked saving a murder over his son.

Bruce couldn’t quite believe he let what happened to happen. He had picked Jason’s murder over his own son. That had caused the vigilante to lose Jason again. Bruce was suppose to be two steps ahead, but he didn’t see this. He didn’t expect to miss a step and end up face planting in a whole lot of shit.

He wished he had shot Joker when he had the gun. But the clown always got the last laugh. Always.


End file.
